Indian Telecom face heavy losses due to OTT apps

Experts and companies opined, that the telcos in India are on a verge of facing heavy losses in voice calling and value added services due to the OTT(over the top) players or simply apps like Whastapp or Skype which are providing free calls and messaging services.

The OTT apps are unlicensed and hence do not incur any problems in the management of the apps. Unlike them, the telcos in India are licensed and hence should act in such a way that they do not fall in losses. The companies 30% to 50% revenues have lost due to the apps like Whatsapp, Viber, Skype which are not licensed and do not follow any norms. The losses incurred may lead to the telcos rising the data charges, with the expansion of the broadband facilities to rural areas becoming hard.

India has been the most exposed when compared to other countries like Korea, America and China. Here the data are used in a larger amount with the voice calling and sms features being neglected. In other countries, there has been a equal usage of the services as there the packages come with a data and voice minutes.

It is estimated that the Telecom faced about 5,745 crore loss in the past two years, due to the introduction of OTT apps. Features such as voice calling and SMS services are neglected by the Telecom subscribers. The losses are expected to rises to $63 billion in 2018, the Times of India reports.

However, some argue that the VoIP calls charge more than the traditional voice calls due to heavy consumption of data. There is a belief that the telcos have been working as a profit centric companies rather than a customer centric ones.